Bird’s-eye view profile portrait of President Woodrow Wilson, who guided the nation through World War I. While most of Mole & Thomas’s designs were pictorial representations of graphic symbols, this ambitious arrangement created Wilson’s likeness down to his trademark eyeglasses with 21,000 officers and men at Camp Sherman in Chillicothe, Ohio. Wilson’s signature is reproduced as part of the title, lower left. This is one of a series of aerial view photographs of military personnel in formations produced by Mole & Thomas, a Chicago firm. They are famous for their grand patriotic bird’s-eye group shots at military bases after World War I in which they organized astonishing numbers of people to form designs they called “Living Emblems.” Between 9,000 and 30,000 military personnel, dressed in light or dark clothing according to the requirements of the design, would be positioned to form recognizable patriotic illustrations when seen from above.

Description

Arthur S. Mole was a British-born commercial photographer who worked in Zion, Illinois. During and shortly after World War I, Mole traveled with his partner John D. Thomas from one military camp to another, posing thousands of soldiers to form gigantic patriotic symbols that they photographed from above. Each photo is inscribed with a title giving the subject, the number of enlisted men, officers and nurses participating, as well as the name of the commanding officer and the name and location of the base. Sometimes buildings and tents on the base can be seen in the background. These designs are remarkable inasmuch as they were not based on simple grids, but involved arranging the people in curving lines, leaving spaces between rows to form shadows, or having them wear hats or not, to create the shading and subtleties of an actual drawing.

Mole & Thomas’s subjects include the American eagle; a stars and stripes shield; the emblem of the United States Marines; the Statue of Liberty; and a profile portrait of President Woodrow Wilson, who guided the nation through World War I. The Wilson portrait, for example, was formed using 21,000 officers and men at Camp Sherman in Ohio and stretched over 700 feet. The “Human Liberty Bell” was composed from over 25,000 soldiers, arranged with Mole’s characteristic attention to detail to depict the crack in the bell. Mole and Thomas spent a week or more preparing for each of these immense works. They were were taken from a 70- or 80-foot tower with an 11- by- 14-inch view camera. When the demand for these photographs dropped in the 1920s, Mole returned to his photography business in Zion. Photographs by Mole and Thomas are in numerous prestigious collections including the Chicago Historical Society, the Museum of Modern Art and the Library of Congress.

Condition: Generally good with the usual overall wear, toning, fading handling. Margins entirely trimmed. Left edge, and part of lower edge considerable worn, now professionally reinforced and slightly tipped in with dyed Japanese paper, not affecting image.

References:

Jensen, Oliver. America’s Yesterdays — Images of Our Lost Past Discovered in the Photographic Archives of The Library of Congress. New York: American Heritage Publishing Co., Inc., 1978, pp. 248-49.